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Thursday, March 19, 2015

Comics Rant: Captain America #1

I was cleaning out a shelf and boom! A trade fell and totally hit me in the head. So since Mark Waid and his Daredevil run is all the rage I figured I’d write a few rants about his awesome 1990’s Captain America stuff. This was around the time of the “Heroes Return” era. You see kids back in the 1990’s Jim Lee and Rob Lei field were considered stars. Laughable at this point, Lee can still go when there is a paycheck to be had and Rob, well I guess he just lives on Todd McFarlane’s couch while sneaking out every so often to not draw feet and eat scraps from the dumpster.

So yeah, Mark Waid was writing Captain America and all was good. That is until Marvel decided to take Cap, along with Iron Man and Fantastic Four along with The Avenger’s and pimp them out to Jim and Rob to let them re-imagined them so to speak. But you know how that goes. Rob never seems to do a damn thing on time, so Jim Lee took over all the books. Then Jim folded. You know he can’t be held to keep up with a silly little thing like a “deadline” or people wanting to “read” their books. How dare they. Well they whole think sucked and fans cried foul. Don’t blame them really. If you had a chance to read a comic by Mark Waid vs. the other guys, I’d get pretty damn vocal, too.

So yeah, Marvel decided to turn to title back over to Waid and Garney and restart the whole thing with a new #1. You know, before the thing became pretty much industry standard. Cap is back from the whole Jim/Rob/ Onslaught thing to return to the regular Marvel U. But surprise he’s in Japan. Some Japanese dudes are bent out of shape in this tale because of how much Japan is starting to look like the west. AKA America. So they pretty much want to kill people to get them to fall in line with their way of thinking. You know when that type of shit is going down Captain America is gonna show up to shut it down. One thing about Mark Waid’s CAP is that he’s mindful of how he’s presented to the world, but if push comes to shove he’ll kick your ass. Truly Cap embodies the last few years of the Clinton Administration. Minus you know, the impeachment and all that.

So Cap is in Japan taking on a Japanese terror group called “Strikeforce Ukiyoe”. They want Japan to go back to the way it was. Like in World War Two. Hmmm, no wonder Captain America was so eager to beat on them. Captain America is also freaked out to know that in the regular Marvel 616 Earth he’s been gone for over a year, and here he thought he was gone only for a few days. Hell they even have a big budget movie about his life set to premiere. No word on who played Cap on the big screen in 1998. Nic Cage, Maybe. Hey, don’t laugh. There was a time when that dude was in everything. It’s true. So Strikeforce Ukiyoe don’t vibe with Captain America being back and enlist the help of Lady Deathstrike. You know, the former lover of Wolverine. She decides to help them out and kill Captain America.

Agent 13, Sharon Carter now learns that Captain America is alive and well. She’s not happy because she doesn’t want him in her life now, you know because all the is he or isn’t he dead crap she has to put up with. But now that I think about it to be fair, she kinds of does that to Steve as much as he does it to her. Suck it up, Agent 13! So Strikeforce Ukiyoe set up a bomb in a theater getting ready to premiere the Captain America movie. You know? The one with Nic Cage. But Cap gets some Intel and crashes the party. He fights with Lady Deathstrike and once she see’s that they are even;y matched she makes a break for it, while the leader of Strikeforce Ukiyoe was supposed to blow himself along with Cap and everyone in the movie theater to Kingdom Come. Hey, that’s another tale that Mark Waid wrote. Go figure.

I had fun re reading this issue. Fast paced with lots of action and Ron Garney was really starting to cut his teeth here as rising star over at Marvel. Classic Super Hero action with a modern twist. It’s pretty much been Waid’s calling card for a while now and he shows why he’s one of the best and a modern day Stan Lee. Now I’m starting to wonder if Mark ever withheld checks from Ron?